Nate Silver Floats Biden Drop Out As President’s Approval Rating Sinks to New ‘All-Time Low’

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Political commentator and data analyst Nate Silver is again asking if the Democratic Party’s interests would be best served by President Joe Biden dropping out of this year’s presidential race.

Silver has long been concerned about Biden’s ability to beat Donald Trump in a 2020 rematch. In a Substack post from February, Silver noted that Biden was “losing now” and had “no plan” to reverse his electoral fortunes.

“Personally, I crossed the rubicon in November, concluding that Biden should stand down if he wasn’t going to be able to run a normal reelection campaign — meaning, things like conduct a Super Bowl interview,” wrote Silver at the time. “Yes, it’s a huge risk and, yes, Biden can still win. But he’s losing now and there’s no plan to fix the problems other than hoping that the polls are wrong or that voters look at the race differently when they have more time to focus on it.”

Months later — and with election day coming up fast — Silver is still arguing that Biden should be considering ceding the Democratic presidential nomination to somebody else.

“Biden just hit a new all-time low in approval (37.4%) at 538 yesterday. Dropping out would be a big risk. But there’s some threshold below which continuing to run is a bigger risk,” observed Silver on X. “Are we there yet? I don’t know. But it’s more than fair to ask.”

What’s clearer IMO is that Democrats would have been better served if Biden had decided a year ago not to seek a second term, which would have allowed them to have some semblance of a primary process and give voters a say among the many popular Democrats across the country.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 10, 2024

Then he took the liberty of issuing an “I told you so” to his detractors.

“What’s clearer IMO is that Democrats would have been better served if Biden had decided a year ago not to seek a second term, which would have allowed them to have some semblance of a primary process and give voters a say among the many popular Democrats across the country,” added Silver.

Silver was citing FiveThirtyEight’s average of Biden’s approval rating, which has the incumbent president underwater by 18.9%.